


Rumple's New York Adventures

by Endangered_Slug



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 17:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6667666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endangered_Slug/pseuds/Endangered_Slug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short stories featuring Rumple's adventures in New York City between 4A and 4B.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Combo #5

**Author's Note:**

> frenchroast007 asked: Prompt: The real reason Rumple didn't order anything at Mr. Cluck's is because he spent 4 of the past six weeks working there.

“Thank you for your order and have a cluckity cluck cluck day.”

Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes as he spoke the management-required words as dryly as possible to emphasis his hatred for them then waited for the next car full of stoned teenagers to roll up and place their order.  

It wasn’t the most degrading thing he’d had to do in order to survive — he’d kissed a man’s boot to save his son from being taken away and he’d dragged himself through the mud more than once in his lifetime. Had begged his wife for mercy on his knees before giving up and… dragging himself away through the mud, but it was damn close. For the past four weeks since his arrival in this cursed city, his life consisted of menial, greasy, mind-numbing work and he’d been living off the the meager pay, relying on his employee discount for meals, until he could formulate a plan to return to Storybrooke and Belle. He just had to keep going, keep moving, keep thinking.

“Welcome to Mr. Cluck’s, how may I take your order,” he said when the bell dinged, indicating there was another order to take.

The voice coming over the speaker was so garbled that he had to ask the person to repeat it three times before he was able to punch the order in (the store’s registers provided tiny pictures of each item instead of relying on the literacy rate of its employees and Rumple felt insulted every time he had to use it).

“That will be seven forty-three, Dearie. Pull up to the second window and…” He heaved a sigh. “Have a cluckity cluck cluck day.”

When his shift was over and he changed out of his hideous yellow and red uniform and chucked the ridiculous hair net into the trash, he got a combo meal to go. The food wasn’t the best, but he knew what it was like to starve and he’d never been picky about what he ate. It was filling and cheap and that was all that mattered to him.

He took his meal to a small park and watched the squirrels run around without a care in the world and envied them. he brought an extra roll, crumbling it into pieces and scattering the crumbs about as he got up having learned that if he fed them while he ate they would take it as an invitation to join him and while they are cute from afar, having squirrels in your lap, digging into your four piece, dark meat with a side of mashed, no gravy was entirely different.

Dinner over, he tossed the trash into the bin and headed home where he would plot out his next move, whatever that would be. His heart hurt and there were shooting pains down his left arm — probably from standing at an odd angle at the register for hours at a time, leaning out the window so he could take people’s cash. Maybe, instead of plotting, he’d lay down and rest for a while.

When he opened his door to find the thief and his family squatting in his son’s apartment, shock and pain became too much and, clutching his chest, he fell to the floor.

* * *

_Well, isn’t this splendid,_ he thought as Cruella pulled into the line at Mr. Cluck’s. His heart gave a painful squeeze as a reminder of the last time he’d eaten here and the ensuing heart attack. Maybe it hadn’t been caused by cholesterol, but he wasn’t about to let another greasy chicken strip touch his lips again.

“Anything for you, Rumple?” Cruella asked over her shoulder.

“No thanks,” he told her, dryly. “I want to live to see my happy ending.”


	2. Ramen Noodles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> frenchroast007 asked: Prompt: Rumple discovers ramen at the grocery store.

Grocery shopping had never been a huge thing back in Storybrooke. Back when the curse was still in effect, he didn’t need to do any shopping since he basically lived the same day year after year after year. Once Emma came to town and time started moving forward, he still didn’t need to worry about it over much. His pantry was never completely empty and if he didn’t feel like frying an egg for himself then he ate at Granny’s with the rest of the population. When Belle lived with him, they did the marketing together, planning their meals according to whatever they felt like eating that day if they didn’t decide to eat out.

Bae’s apartment had been stocked with some supplies, but they had run out. Now that he was on his own, and with his first pay from his job at Mr. Cluck’s sitting in his pocket, he had to learn how to do do the marketing all over again.

The first thing he learned was that the bargaining system no longer existed in this land as it did in the old. Grocery stores, too cold, too bright, and too noisy with their piped in music, were firm on their prices and, even though he thought they were over-inflated, the store employees insisted they had no authority to lower them no matter how much he tried to haggle at the check out.

He knew it wasn’t going to work, but he figured it didn’t hurt to at least try.

After having been escorted out of the misleadingly named Trader Joes, he quietly made his way to another store up the street. It was smaller and a bit squalid, but he was hungry and not very picky.

He roamed the aisles pausing whenever he saw something Belle especially liked and debated if he should splurge on it or keep going. He stood in front of the sanitary napkins longer than he should have, remembering the first time Belle needed them in this land and how she marveled at how much easier some things were than in their old land. The urge to call her welled up inside him and he ruthlessly tamped it down before he fell to the floor, blubbering in front of a display of tampons.

A box of off brand cereal made its way into his basket as well as a package of something called string cheese. He eyed the apples suspiciously before choosing a few oranges then made his way, wandering up and down the rows and rows of boxes and cans, choosing things that were cheap and filling.

Noodles were always a good bet so he made his way to the pasta aisle, pushing his cart with the wonky wheel that constantly made it list to the left, and perused the boxes in front of him. Who knew there were so many different kinds of pasta? They were all essentially the same weren’t they? So why all the shapes? Did anyone actually want to eat something shaped like a wagon wheel? And how did it get into that shape in the first place?

He grabbed a box of angel hair, considering it. Belle liked angel hair pasta and, of course, he made some stupid remark about her own hair and, of course, she laughed at that because she always laughed whenever he made a silly quip. He put the box away and moved on. Pasta may not have been a good idea.

There were some bins on the other side of the aisle stuffed full of packets of a different kind of noodles and he meandered in that direction. He grabbed one, wondering what it meant by oriental flavoring, but as the price point read six for a dollar, he figured he’d learn to like it.

He filled his cart with the crinkly packets and went to check out, wondering to himself if Belle would like these ramen noodles.


	3. Rame Noodles Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> frenchroast007 asked: Okay, I'm an idiot (and should've been more specific). I wish you would write a fic where Mr. Gold tastes ramen for the first time.

The instructions were simple: boil water, add noodles and cook for three minutes, stir in flavor packet, eat. Rumple eyed the small flavor packet suspiciously, but when the three minutes were up, he ripped it open and sprinkled it into the boiling soup figuring what the heck.

Voila! Dinner was served. He figured he would be excused if he didn’t pour it out into a bowl so he sat the pot on a dishcloth to keep from making a burn mark on Bae’s table and dug in.

Ten minutes later, he’d made another pot with two more packages of ramen noodles and scarfed them down feeling his belly get comfortably full at last.

He’d have to stop by the grocery store tomorrow to stock up.


	4. Library

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> itssandgirl asked: shopper gold ! anymore heartbreaking trips too the store !

Rumplestiltskin stood next to the giant stone lion and watched as people posed on the steps in front of him. The building was smaller than he thought it would be and further back from the street than he’d expected, nor was he anticipating the crowds of people milling about, but he pressed on, dodging cameras and tourists on his way to the front doors.

There were more steps leading up into the building itself and he balked at them, but he was determined on going in. He paused as he got to the terrace and snapped a picture with his cell phone, thumb hovering over the send button.

Belle had so wanted to see this place. But she wanted to see it in person, not through the blurry image of a camera phone.

He deleted the picture and shoved the phone in his coat pocket. It would be wrong to send it to her when she made it quite clear that she wanted him out of her life. Showing her sights that she longed for would be cruel and he could never be deliberately cruel to Belle.

He gripped his cane tighter and began the trek up the stone steps leading up to the New York Public library.


	5. False Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: MrClucks Gold- Did you ever serve someone you knew while working at the drive thru?

 

Rumplestiltskin adjusted the hairnet for the fifth time since his shift started, the elastic biting into his forehead uncomfortably. Ridiculous that he was forced to wear it when he wasn’t handling the food, but the manager insisted. If he was still in Storybrooke, Rumple thought she would have been someone familiar… Old Mother Hubbard maybe he thought with a shudder. That harridan had run a reign of terror in her village before one brave soul called upon him to be rid of her forever.

But that was back home in the Enchanted Forest and it had taken place nearly a hundred years before the Curse, so even she was too dead to come over with the rest of them.

Maybe.

He squinted at the woman in question as the tell-tale ring of a bell sounded to inform him that there was a customer at the order box.

Goodie.

“Welcome to Mr. Cluck’s, Dearie, do you want to try our bwuket of chicken,” he intoned into the microphone.  

“Yeah, I’ll take a… Mr. Cluck’s two-piece and a…” the speaker went silent as he conferred with another person in their car. “Make that two. With Cokes. ”

That voice! Garbled over the substandard wiring of the speaker, but it was unmistakable. He clutched at his heart, the pounding, squeezing, twisting of it had made his breath leave his body entirely. It couldn’t be. He was _dead_. He held him as he died just before Zelena…

“Bae?” he croaked out, gasping for air. “Is that you?” Had he somehow cheated death and escaped Storybrooke? He felt a burst of hope well up from some unknown, hidden spring. “Have you come for me?”

“I ain’t no one’s _bae_ , dude,” the voice said, half-offended amid the raucous laughter of his companion.

Rumple’s heart sank, but the pain was still there. Still sharp and twisting and ever-present. Of course it wasn’t him. Bae was dead and gone and now he was living in his apartment. Squatting like the beggar he was.

Rumplestiltskin’s manager had made a concession for his bad ankle and provided a tall stool for his use when he would be on his feet for long stretches of time. He sat down on it heavily, wishing not for the first time that his son and Belle had left him dead in the vault.

“You there, man?” the voice said, clearly annoyed now.

Rumple mumbled the total and waited for the car to pull forward  and sure enough the man couldn’t have been more unlike his son if he’d tried. More false hope eating away at him for naught. Bae gone. Belle gone. There was nothing left but his empty heart, he didn’t even have the chipped cup. Belle hadn’t even left him that much.

“You’re a sick old fuck, you know that?” the man said from the safety of his car, disgust written on his face as he handed over some money. “Keep the change, man. I don’t want to touch you.”

Rumple stared at his hands as the car pulled forward to the next window, certain that he would be sacked in minutes. He hoped he had enough ramen to last the week. Maybe he could find another job. Maybe he’d just give up.

He glanced the window as the car peeled off.

Definitely not Baelfire.


	6. Not the Worst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> frenchroast007 asked: Fluffy prompt: Gold has to wear the chicken costume while working at Mr. Cluck's.

It wasn’t the most humiliating thing he’d ever done in the course of his long life, but wearing the chicken suit and standing on the sidewalk was definitely high on the list of degrading job descriptions. The thing smelled terrible, as if it hadn’t been washed in a thousand years and then balled up and stored in moldy socks when not in use. Still, the manager had been adamant and he couldn’t afford to lose his job over something so trivial.

The first time he wore it, he stood stock still and glared at people driving by, mentally keeping time until he was allowed back inside, but the manager had complained that he wasn’t lively enough. So the second time around, he shook his tail feathers and danced to the imagined beat of Belle’s favorite song in this world, murmuring the lyrics under his breath as he boogied.

 

_“… Apple bottom jeans, jeans_

_boots with the fur, with the fur…”_

 

A car honked and someone shouted, “Go get ‘em, Grandpa!” at him as it sped by and Rumple waved a wing at it while he continued earning his paycheck.

_“She hit the flo’, she hit the flo’_

_Next thing you know_

_Shawty got low low low low, low low low low”_

 

More cars honking, a few more refrains, some deliberate clucking and then he started all over again.

He wasn’t as young as he used to be and the magiclessness of this world left him at a disadvantage, but he thought he was doing all right for a 300 year-old man so it was with some chagrin when he heard the line manager tell him once his shift was over that it might be better for business if he stayed in the Drive Thu window from now on.


End file.
